ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:
Late Eclipses is the fourth of Tobys adventures. Youd think it would be getting easier, right? I sure did. But the fact of the matter is, books remain a lot of work, no matter how many of them you write, and making them worth reading is the work of many hands. For me, those many hands begin with the faithful Machete Squad, a tireless team of heavily-armed and merciless editors who go through every chapter a dozen times before it becomes ready for prime time. Without them, I would be in a lot of trouble. Special thanks to Jennifer Midkiff, for scrupulous editorial attentions, and to Melissa Glasser, for being my on-call vet for weird questions about fae biology. Also, thanks to everyone at the Ohio Valley Filk Festival, who tolerantly allowed me to do copyedits during open filking.
On the publishing side of things, my agent, Diana Fox, saved my sanity and my sense of narrative on several occasions, all while continuing to rock like the superhero she is, and my editor, Sheila Gilbert, offered support, critique, and everything else a girl could possibly want. The rest of the team at DAW was just as fabulous, although special thanks go to Joshua Starr, who puts up with most of my random mid-week questions. Chris McGrath provided my fantastic cover, and Tara OShea provided my fantastic interior dingbat. I seriously could not have done this without them.
Here at home, my website was programmed and designed by Chris Mangum and Tara OShea, who gamely rose to every challenge I threw their way, even the insane ones. Kate Secor talked me through the big plot snarls, while her Tivo prevented me from destroying all mankind. Meanwhile, Michelle Dockrey and Brooke Lunderville helped me through everything else. Thanks to Tanya Huff, for San Diego, and to Jennifer Brozek, Jeanne Goldfein, and Cat Valente, for Melbourne. You guys made everything better. Finally, thanks to my cats, Lilly and Alice, for understanding that sometimes their monkey needs to stop petting them in order to type.
My personal soundtrack while writing Late Eclipses consisted mostly of Promised Land, by Dar Williams, Little Voice, by Sarah Bareilles, endless live concert recordings of the Counting Crows, and all of the soundtracks to Glee. Any errors in this book are entirely my own. The errors that arent here are the ones that all these people helped me fix.
Thank you all so much for reading. It means the world to me.
ONE
April 30th, 2011
These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend
No good to us: though the wisdom of nature can
Reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself
Scourged by the sequent effects: love cools,
Friendship falls off, brothers divide: in
Cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in
Palaces, treason; and the bond cracked twixt son
And father...
William Shakespeare, King Lear
THE DOWNTOWN SAN FRANCISCO SAFEWAY was practically deserted. No surprise there, given that it was nearly one in the morning. Maymy Fetch and current roommatewas in the produce department, tormenting the resident pixies. Their shrieks of irritation were almost enough to distract me from the task at hand. Almost; not quite. We had a mission, and I was, by Oberon, going to accomplish it.
Glancing along the row of cereals, I considered my options with exquisite care before reaching out and grabbing a box of Lucky Charms. The stuffs delicious when you combine it with enough coffee, even if it does mean putting up with that stupid cartoon leprechaun. I hesitated before taking a second box. Its not every night that I get to splurge.
My names Toby Daye. Im half-fae, half-human, and depressingly excited by the idea of being able to pay for name-brand cereal.
The empty Safeway was doing wonders for my mood. I hate shopping where I used to work, and the last thing I wanted to do after spending three days on stakeout was deal with my former coworkers. They seemed to share the sentiment, since theyd all vanished into the back as soon as they saw me. That was cool with me. I wasnt friendly when I worked at the storehostile is a more accurate descriptionand I didnt quit so much as walk out and never come back.
I wasnt meant to be a checkout girl. I probably wasnt meant to do anything that involves dealing with the public, which makes my career choice of private investigator-slash-knight errant all the more ironic. Still, when you live in the shady borderland between Faerie and the mortal world, neither beggars nor changelings can be choosers.
The stakeout was for the first of my two vocations, the one that lets me pay the bills with a telephoto lens and a minimum of magic. My employer was a Silene who wanted to know where her husband was spending his spare time. Silene are horses from the waist down: sturdy, practical, and jealous as hell. She should never have married a Satyr if she didnt want him looking at other women, since thats basically what Satyrs are built to do. Her suspicions werent unfounded: her goat-boy husband was getting a little extramarital action from the Hind two streets over, a doe-eyed lady if there ever was one. A couple of nights in the car, a few incriminating photos, and I was in the rare position of being able to pay for groceries.
The lack of clerks wasnt a problem, thanks to my shopping companions. May was racing through the store fast enough that she might as well have been on roller skates. Our mutual friend, Danny, was moving more sedately; its just that he was doing it while being more than seven feet tall. Hes not actually all that big, for a Bridge Troll, but hes good for getting things off of high shelves.
Hey! May jogged toward me with an armload of cantaloupes. She dumped them unceremoniously into the cart, without regard for what might be crushed in the process. Did you know there were pixies in the produce section?
Yes, and so did you. I tapped my temple. No ones ever quite figured out what makes Fetches appear, but when they do, they come equipped with all the memories of the person they mirror. Theyre death omens; once a Fetch with your face shows up, your days are supposed to be numbered. Lucky for me, May has about as much innate interest in following rules as I do, and shes actually saved my life on at least one occasion. As far as I know, Im the first person to live more than a month past the arrival of a Fetchand Im definitely the first person to ask their Fetch to move in.
Mays store of borrowed memories includes my mind-numbing stint as a Safeway checkout girl. Thats not a period of my life I like to dwell on, although the cynic in me insists on pointing out that fewer people were trying to kill me in those days. And yet, without all those attempts on my life, I wouldnt have needed a Fetch, and Id have missed out on Mays excellent vegetarian lasagna. Theres a bright side to everything.
